


Let Her Go

by Neverlong



Category: Mystic Messenger (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, I'm warning you, SO SAD, Surprise Ending, cried while writing this, don't do it if you're not prepared, emotional angst, kisses throughout, sadness galore, who does reader end up with
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-29
Updated: 2017-05-29
Packaged: 2018-11-06 11:05:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11034909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neverlong/pseuds/Neverlong
Summary: He knew she could do better than him. It didn’t make the pain any more bearable.Based loosely off the song by Passenger.





	Let Her Go

He could see the rift between them in a palpable form when he came home from work. Where there had once been a loving smile, a hug, anything to let him know that she was there and had been waiting for his return there was now an empty hallway. A closed guest bedroom door. A plate left on the table for him, even when he made sure to get home early.  
  
There were no more breathless smiles. No more whispered compliments or ruminating over his day with his love. There was no more love when the other person was hardly around, and it was surprising to everyone around them to learn that it wasn't Jumin who was doing the avoiding.  
  
It was getting ridiculous when he noticed her running into the guest room after a surprise visit home for lunch. He hadn't expected to cause her to run and hide from just a simple run home for some leftovers from her. Everything had been going so well up until just recently. Was this what people called a dying love?  
  
He wouldn't have that. Not if there were any other options.  
  
  
  
  
“Please open up, my love, I only want to talk.” There is rumbling on the other side of the door, a soft mashing sound that he distinctly recognizes as her footsteps. “I'm not sure what I've done wrong. Shouldn't we talk so that we can find a solution? You mean the world to me.”  
  
The sounds stop. Not because she stopped dead in her tracks, but because her next move was to open the door.  
  
He backs away to give her some space. While he smiles charmingly, she sniffles and wipes at her eyes. It’s disarming in a way that alarms him, and he steps forward to wipe at her cheeks in concern before hesitation grips his fingers and they stray from their paths to stroke her hair from her face.  
  
“Did I do this?” His voice breaks, and he feels pathetic but she can’t leave him now, not when he’s worked so hard to learn to love her entirely.  
  
“No,” she murmurs. Though she's still crying, he feels an immense relief.  
  
“Would you like to talk about it?” Her eyes slip shut as she moves to cradle his hand, which in turn slips down and holds her cheek.  
  
“I should have before,” she swallows, her hesitation evident. Jumin’s thumb drifted like the wind, down to the corner of her eye to wipe her tears away without either one feeling like he was truly there. “But I think we should now.”  
  
“What am I doing?” he coolly answers, “What do I need to fix?” he amends.  
  
“Jumin, it’s not you,” her breaths peter out over his wrist. The kiss she places there feels like an early apology, “it’s me. I can’t keep this up. I love you—so much, darling, I really do. But I think I may have rushed into something. I just can’t…”  
  
Her eyes dart up to meet his, but he sees the distance between them and he can’t breathe. She’s stolen all of the air from him—he’s given it to her so that she can finish, so that she can wrench the knife from his back and he can lick his wounds in a corner somewhere like a dying animal.  
  
Jumin had never been without his wants in life. When he was a child, he only ever wanted his mother to hold him. Especially once she died and his father took over the family business. His father decided to marry his fair share of women to fill the hole left behind, but there was never any lasting warmth in their embrace, so Jumin stopped seeing them as his mother and instead as objects that his father groomed and in return they would run off in the middle of the night with his money.  
  
And from the first moment that he met Jihyun Kim, Jumin wanted desperately for them to be best friends. He wanted the kind of friend that he saw on TV, the one that you talked to all the time and who would always have your back. He was not disappointed.  
  
When he met Rika, he wanted…something. She was completely unique; unlike any woman he had ever seen before, she was kind and courteous, and she didn’t expect anything but friendship from him. He wanted her to be happy, and he wanted to be happy with her and V. At one point, he might have even convinced himself that what he felt around them was considered love, and though he wasn’t sure what exactly that entailed, he wanted them to be around them. It was nice. While it lasted, at least.  
  
But then he met _her_. He was so sure that it was a momentous occasion that he started to look at himself in terms of before and after. Before her, he was confused at best, alone at worst. After her, he was everything he could have ever wanted to be at best, and at worst—  
  
Well. This is the worst thing that could have happened to him. Her tears soaking his thumb, his touches unable to console her, his very presence enough to torment her to this level of anguish. The him After loving her, After meeting and caring and wanting and having her—it was too much to see her recoil and decay and depress into herself because of him.  
  
He knows what he has to do. To save her, he tells himself, he’ll do anything.  
  
“Do you want to…” his voice cracks on the last word: how unlike the Jumin Before. He clears his throat, but it doesn’t help his plight. The mutinous words choke him. “Do you want to leave?”  
  
“Jumin, I feel so low,” she cries. His question is left untended. “I’m such a horrible person. I love you, I swear, and you should hate me for this.”  
  
“I could never,”  
  
Her throat clenches, so he kisses her temple. It reminds him of their first time together, when he was scared of hurting her. Now his fears have come to life in a much more heinous way, and he’s so scared to lose her.  
  
“I could never hate you. We can get through this. We can go slower. I’ll take time off to see you, if that’s what you want.”  
  
“Jumin, I don’t want you to wait for me.”  
  
He can’t find the words he needs; too many crash into his skull, tangling like a spider’s web. All he manages is a soft, “What?”  
  
“I think I’m in love with…” she breaks off, wiping at the tears on her cheeks when Jumin neglects to move, wishing he could hear the words she mumbled under her breath. Was that a name? “And it’s not fair to you. I should’ve told you a while ago, but they—they really…make me happy, Jumin. I’m so sorry.”  
  
The air is still. He notices her fingers wrapping around her wrist, wringing out any words she could come up with. It wasn’t anything significant. He had pressed so many little kisses to that wrist. For a while, he’s too distracted by the thought of the way she would tie her hair into a headache of a twirl when she came home from work with Jaehee at the coffee shop.  
  
But then a question gnawed at him.  
  
“Is it someone I would know?” And then, “Is it Zen?”  
  
The look she gives him is all the answer he needs. It’s a lovely break from the persecuted aura she had been sending out. “Zen? What? Zen’s a bit…too much. For me to handle. I mean, he’s great and all, but…what?”  
  
“Then who?” She sucks her bottom lip into her mouth. Why would she avoid him so avidly? “ _Jaehee_?”  
  
“What?” It’s nothing but surprise. At least she’d stopped crying. “No, no, no. I mean, Jaehee is great, but I’m—it’s not like that…”  
  
“Luciel, then? Or perhaps Yoosung? For god’s sakes, please don’t say my fathe—”  
  
“ _No_. I promise it’s none of them.”  
  
“Then who?” He watches a steadying breath fill her chest. Her eyelashes knot themselves together at the corners of her eyes. If he leaned closer, he could probably smell the cinnamon and nutmeg and other confectionary spices in her hair.  
  
“I know I don't really have any right to say this,” she mutters into her hand, “but please don't be mad.”  
  
“I’m not angry with you,” he says, calmly, coaxingly. It’s all he can truthfully manage.  
  
“Okay.” Her head nods rhythmically, gaining confidence from the motion, and her eyes glisten with unshed tears. “Okay. I think—this is really terrible of me to ask, but could they stay here for a little while?”  
  
She catches the way his face flickers in shock, like a switch under the thumb of a toddler. Just when he schools his features into a collected facade, she notices how his eyebrow twitches into something similar to a scowl. Immediately, she jumps into the conversation to sanitize the deal.  
  
“They just need a place to stay for a little while. Just until they get into a new home—please Jumin,” she bites the edge of her lip. “I…I couldn’t tell them no. I understand if you don’t want them here. But please at least see them.”  
  
“Of course.”  
  
“Okay,” her breath sputtered out across her hands. When Jumin was least expected it, she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and pressed her cheek into the soft fabric of his shirt. An unwarranted kiss was sealed into his neck, right below his jaw, and he had half a mind to tell her off for it. She was in love with someone else, after all. “I’m so sorry. I should have talked with you before.”  
  
“Yes,” he starts, “you should have.”  
  
There is no anger within him, however, and so the words fall flat from his tongue. “I wish things could have turned out different.”  
  
“Yeah, me too.”  
  
The doorbell rings, and Jumin’s stomach drops like a dead weight. All those threads in his mind seem to tighten around his heart, squeezing until he feels like he’s staring through a camera instead of watching his life unfurl before him. Watching what was slowly becoming his biggest regret. _Why hadn’t I asked her what was wrong before? Why hadn’t I paid more attention to her?_  
  
“I’ll get that,” she smiles grimly, her hair curling over an ear as she leaves his side. It feels cold where she once was.  
  
“I’m right behind you.”  
  
The trek to the front door is a solemn one. A silent walk to the slaughterhouse, where Jumin wonders if her new love will wipe away her tears with the same love and affection he could have once showered upon her. Would he be able to go back to an empty apartment when she left? Relying on Elizabeth III for comfort?  
  
Jumin hears his bodyguard speaking to her, but he can’t make out the words beyond his own thoughts.  
  
Until she grabs his hand and smiles beatifically at him. It’s a radiant thing despite her puffy, red eyes and the stutters in her breathing. “They’re here. Would you like to see?”  
  
He feels himself nod, once, stolidly, and she kisses the back of his hand as a premature apology.  
  
“We’re ready, I think.”  
  
The man at the door nods and motions to someone standing at the elevator.  
  
“I saw them when I was walking home from the café the other week, and I couldn’t get them out of my mind.” What sounds like something being rolled on creaky dollies fills the hallway. “I know I should have told you before saying we could take them in, but I love them all so much.”  
  
“All?” Jumin stares down at her, bewildered even as she starts to smile sheepishly.  
  
“I might have adopted an entire cat shelter?”  
  
And he sees paws and hears mewls as her words shine true, as her words start to click into place. He can’t help the relieved laugh that escapes him as he watches more cats file into his line of vision.  
  
“I know it’s a big responsibility,” she continues, not noticing how Jumin only half-listens, “and I know how much you dote on Elizabeth. I promise that if it’s too much, I’ll make other arrangements.”  
  
“This was why you were crying?” He kisses the top of her head, her temple, her cheek, relieved and remotely angry that he misunderstood her so laughably. “You thought I’d be angry at you for this?”  
  
“Well, it does seem a little silly. But I really should have talked with you before this, and I’m sorry for not telling you until the last minute.”  
  
“I don’t care about that.” His arms wrap around her solidly, and she sinks into him. It’s such a warm feeling. “I thought that you were leaving me for someone else.”  
  
But it seems she’s caught up in the relief of the moment as well, as she merely barks out a staccato laugh, “Oh god, Jumin. I’m so sorry.”

Her lips curve upwards as she watches the crates of cats open in the house, several felines dart towards the door where she kicks out a foot to ensure they can’t get lost. “But you know, it’ll take a lot more than this for me to ever leave you.”

“Good.” The word crests against her ear, and a kiss against the shell makes her shiver. He smiles at that, at the closing distance between them. “Because I don’t intend to let you go."

**Author's Note:**

> Oh my god so if you've come this far, I applaud you. I cried laughing over this because it waS SUPPOSED TO BE ACTUAL ANGST but apparently I can't handle that. I, too, would adopt an entire cat shelter (for their sake of course, the cats need love).


End file.
